In [25][26], Montagu and Cholmondeley were assisted by an MI6 representative, Major Frank Foley, as they examined the practicalities of the plan. Macintyre took a long time to say tell a short story (see Secrets of WW2: The corpse that fooled Hitler; same story 28 min), but more importantly he overly emphasises the importance of MINCEMEAT; which merely confirmed Hitler's suspicions of an Allied attack on Greece. The aim of Op­er­a­tion Mince­meat was to allow doc­u­ments per­tain­ing to Al­lied op­er­a­tions in the Mediter­ranean to fall into the hands of Ger­man Mil­i­tary In­tel­li­gence, to mis­lead them re­gard­ing the tar­get of the in­tended in­va­sion of south­ern Eu­rope. In his scholarly work on the subject, Deathly Deception, (2010) Professor Denis Smith also leaves absolutely no doubt that the body used was that of Glyndwr Michael. I doubt such a plan would be feasible today, even in wartime. At a memorial service aboard the new HMS Dasher in 2004, Lieutenant Commander Mark Hill did say that Melville’s body was used in the deception. Ah... England lost the bid so let's revert to the good ol' staple of how we won the war. One of the reasons it worked so well was that the organisers were left alone to get on with it, almost without supervision. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Part of the wider Operation Barclay, Mincemeat was based on the 1939 Trout memo, written by Rear Admiral John Godfrey, the Director of the Naval Intelligence Division and his personal assistant, Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming. Complain about this comment (Comment number 29). Storms in June '44 nearly made a failure of D-day. The Times article is very good and this quote:“Michael’s body got through all the proper channels but it was of no use. Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming", Godfrey's personal assistant. [84][85] Seraph's commander, Lt. Bill Jewell, and crew had previous special operations experience. This is precisely why Spain was chosen and not occupied Europe where the Germans may have PM'd the corpse and certainly wouldn't have returned the briefcase! [47][n 6] The rank of acting major made him senior enough to be entrusted with sensitive documents, but not so prominent that anyone would expect to know him. He joined the service in 1927 not "1937" No apology has been received from Ben Macintyre except an assurance the error will be corrected in next paperback edition.. If you aren't sure what RSS is you'll find our beginner's guide to RSS useful. Complain about this comment (Comment number 22). That would never happen now. After seaplanes and surface ships were dismissed as being problematic, a submarine was chosen as the method of delivering the corpse to the region. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so. In line with standard practice, historic records are transferred to The National Archives. This page has been archived and is no longer updated. But he was far too cowardly to share his doubts with Hitler, who never doubted the authenticity of the papers - in large part because they confirmed what he already wanted to believe. The body is then dropped by a Coastal Command aircraft ... On being found, the supposition in the enemy's mind may well be that one of our aircraft has either been shot or forced down and that this is one of their passengers. He ordered that the experienced 1st Panzer Division be transferred from France to Salonika. The only non-issue part to the uniform was the underwear, which was in short supply in war-rationed Britain, so a pair of good-quality woollen underwear, owned by the late Herbert Fisher, the Warden of New College, Oxford, was used. The Mincemeat plan was to place documents on the corpse, and then float it off the coast of Spain, whose nominally neutral government was known to co-operate with the Abwehr, the German military intelligence organisation. He warned Churchill that there were several aspects that could go wrong, including that the Spaniards might pass the corpse back to the British, with the papers unread. The local media were ordered to make no reference to the tragedy, and the authorities ordered the dead to be buried in a mass unmarked grave. [86][87], On 19 April Seraph set sail and arrived just off the coast of Huelva on 29 April after having been bombed twice en route. His evidence hung Crippen but has recently been shown to be completely wrong (the body in Crippins cellar has a Y chromosome so could hardly have been his wife!) Plus of course Germany was fighting a 2 front war anyway... North Africa. [69], Montagu considered that there would be a possible "Roman Catholic prejudice against tampering with corpses",[70] which could miss the documents stored in the corpse's pockets, so they added them to an official briefcase that would not be overlooked. After several attempts at drafting the document did not generate something that was considered natural, it was suggested that Nye should draw up the letter himself to cover the required points. Of course, that is very difficult to quantify, since it would have to be measured in lives saved, battles unfought, and blood unspilled. Spain was not a sophisticated country during WW2, the body carried ID suggesting it was catholic to ensure it was treated with respect and there was no need for the Spanish to PM the body... they were meant to be neutral and all they should have done was return a British body to the British authorities, not cut it up to see if it had really drowned. [75] The agent – Adolf Clauss, a member of the Abwehr – was the son of the German consul, and operated under the cover of an agriculture technician; he was an efficient and effective operative. Mincemeat was one element - an important one without doubt - of a large deception plan named BARCLAY which was designed to keep the Axis forces concentrated in the Balkans - that is away from Sicily.I do not agree with Mr McIntyres assertion that Mincemeat, successful as it was was the "greatest deception operation of the war;" I think that that distinction applies to FORTITUDE which so successfully kept large elements of the German army in the Pas de Calais for several months whilst the Allies landed in Normandy and advanced into France in 1944. Bevan sent an encrypted telegram to Eisenhower's headquarters in Algeria requesting final confirmation, which was received on 17 April. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. When the body was returned to the British, the letter was still on it, and technicians determined that the letter had not been opened. It was agreed by the Chiefs of Staff that the 5th Division should be reinforced by one Brigade Group for the assault on the beach south of CAPE ARAXOS and that a similar reinforcement should be made for the 56th division at KALAMATA. Operation Mincemeat was a successful British deception plan during World War II. The Cabinet Office (which includes the Prime Minister’s Office) does not hold any records on HMS Dasher or Operation Mincemeat. Complain about this comment (Comment number 3), Very true 'andyht57' I just wish historical facts were double checked before printing gestation of the original story......one can it sloppy story making, Complain about this comment (Comment number 4). BBC © 2014 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. [28] Spilsbury advised that a person could have suffered one of many different causes of death, which could be misconstrued in an autopsy. And lastly from the BBC History messageboards is Ferval's mention, of the film of The Man Who Never Was. … The description of the delivery driver, Singen Jock Forceful (sorry, I have no idea re, the correct spelling), is inaccurate to say the least and smacks of fluffing the story up for entertainments sake.At the time, one Willy Grover, was a serving member of SOE and ran a cell in Northern France (one of three successful race drivers to serve in the SOE). Smyth observes that once Hitler gave up the initiative to the Soviets, he never regained it. The first option was Sicily; control of the island would open the Mediterranean Sea to Allied shipping and allow the invasion of continental Europe through Italy. [17] The second option was to go into Greece and the Balkans, to trap the German forces between the British and American invaders and the Soviets. To provide a date that Martin had been in London, ticket stubs from a London theatre and a bill for four nights' lodging at the Naval and Military Club were added. Spilsbury informed him that those who died in an air crash often did so from shock and not drowning; the lungs would not necessarily be filled with water. German signals intercepted by GC&CS showed that even four hours after the invasion of Sicily began, twenty-one aircraft left Sicily to reinforce Sardinia. This dose was not sufficient to kill him outright and its only effect was so to impair the functioning of the liver that he died a little time afterwards. The message, which had been sent two days previously, warned that the invasion was to be in the Balkans, with a feint to the Dodecanese. It occurs to me that Montagu and Cholmondeley took a tremendous chance on the Spanish pathologist not recognising that 'Major Martin' had died a long time earlier. How do we know how much poison he took? He warned Montagu and Cholmondeley that the body had to be used within three months, after which it would have decomposed past the point of usefulness. The saddest thing about this conspiracy theory is that is has led the family of John Melville, including his daughter, to believe something that is not true, which must be very painful. [67][81] Churchill gave his approval to the operation, but delegated the final confirmation to Eisenhower, the overall military commander in the Mediterranean, whose plan to invade Sicily would be affected. Rolt was incarcerated in Colditz and was the designer and builder of the glider that was not used but was recreated at a later date and did indeed fly. [86][88] As it floated, it was riddled with machine gun fire so that it would sink. It was an extraordinary operation in extraordinary times. This was partly intentional since it was hoped that if, by any chance, the Germans did come across the code name, they might assume it referred to the earlier operation, and ignore it. Over the course of a weekend Montagu wrote The Man Who Never Was (1953), which sold two million copies and formed the basis for a 1956 film. Further tests showed that the fibres in the paper had been damaged by folding more than once, which confirmed that the letters had been extracted and read. The strange thing is, his identity is uncertain. Furious relatives protested and some of the dead were returned to their loved ones for burial. [35][74] Montagu later outlined that the choice of Huelva was also made because "there was a very active German agent ... who had excellent contacts with certain Spaniards, both officials and others". The only person in the entire German High Command who had any suspicions was Josef Goebbels, the propaganda minister, who wondered in his diary whether the documents might be an elaborate hoax. [104], Final proof that the Germans had been passed the information from the letters came on 14 May when a German communication was decrypted by the Ultra source of signals intelligence produced by the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park. They did, however, re-use codenames. HMS Dasher (D37) was a British Royal Navy aircraft carrier, of the Avenger class– converted merchant vessels– and one of the shortest lived escort carriers. Spilsbury provided the medical requirements and Cholmondeley contacted Charles Fraser-Smith of the Ministry of Supply[n 9] to produce the container, which was labelled "Handle with care: optical instruments". However document and photographic evidence points directly to a body from HMS Dasher. Jewell told his men that the canister contained a top secret meteorological device to be deployed near Spain. More lives saved! Montagu and Cholmondeley were assisted by an MI6 representative, Major Frank Foley, as they examined the practicalities of the plan. [4], The deliberate planting of fake documents to be found by the enemy was not new; known as the Haversack Ruse, it had been practised by the British and others in the First and Second World Wars. On January 17 of this year, The Sunday Times reported: “Ministry of Defence officials now say the crew of the new HMS Dasher were given wrong information before the memorial service and the true identity of the corpse was Glyndwr Michael, a homeless Welshman.” For the full story: https://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article6991107.ecefollowthetrawler (above) quotes in full the statement by the Naval Historical Branch denying the ‘Dasher Theory’, and for a full, meticulous demolition of that theory, I recommend Roger Morgan’s excellent essay ‘Mincemeat Revisited’ in Beyond the Battle magazine, November 2009. He was also careful to obscure "the idea of an organised programme of strategic deception ... with Mincemeat being presented as a 'wild' one-off caper". I don’t believe the body of an alcoholic tramp would have been used in this operation. [45][46] Additionally, Royal Marines would wear battledress, which was easily obtainable and came in standard sizes. The lungs are filled with water and documents are disposed in an inside pocket. On 29 September 1939, soon after the start of the Second World War, Rear Admiral John Godfrey, the Director of Naval Intelligence, circulated the Trout memo, a paper that compared the deception of an enemy in wartime to fly fishing. of November 1942, became a part of the first Allied combined operation of WW2 by launching 6 Sea Hurricanes, their task to escort and defend an air attack on Oran airfield. Much of what happened will never be known. By the time the story reached Hollywood, it was partly fantasy. The Germans had failed to gain air superiority in the Battle of Britain, their very small navy was hugely outnumbered and only a madman would try and take towed flat bottom barges across the channel in winter. I remember James Holland getting similar criticism for daring to suggest that the Battle of Britain didn't save Britain from invasion (because the Germans were completely incapable of getting an army across the channel). Purchase informed Montagu and Cholmondeley that the small amount of poison in the system would not be identified in a body that was supposed to have been floating in the sea for several days. [77][78] To transport the body by submarine, it needed to be contained within the body of the boat, as any externally mounted container would have to be built with a skin so thick it would alter the level of the waterline. There were two possible targets for the Allies to attack. Steele, John and Noreen (2002).The Secrets of HMS Dasher. Read reviews and opinions and share yours on all things TV - your favourite episodes, live programmes, digital channels, the schedule and everything else. But we can certainly say this: Sicily, the real target, was left comparatively lightly defended, and the island was conquered far faster than many had feared. The events as described by MacIntyre suggest either conspiracy or gross incompetence on the Spanish authorities and indeed among the Germans involved. Ben MacIntrye strongly implies that at least one German agent in Spain, who like his boss Canaris was executed for treason by Hitler, knew full well this was a fake corpse but passed the info on anyway.On a forensic note the body was kept on dry ice, not water ice which has different effects on a body and an aircrash survivor in a life jacket may die of hypothermia. The canister was reloaded and the submarine travelled 12 miles out where it surfaced and the empty container was pushed into the water. [83] The body was placed in the canister, which was filled with 21 pounds (9.5 kg) of dry ice and sealed up. Two days later Bevan met the prime minister – who was in bed, wearing a dressing gown and smoking a cigar – in his rooms at the Cabinet War offices and explained the plan. [118], The military historian Jon Latimer observes that the relative ease with which the allies captured Sicily was not entirely because of Mincemeat, or the wider deception of Operation Barclay. [36], Montagu refused to identify the individual and only identified him as "a bit of a ne'er-do-well, and that the only worthwhile thing that he ever did he did after his death". Their plan was inspired, and entirely illegal. Once the operation was underway, senior intelligence officers began to fear the body could be exhumed by the Germans and subjected to a second post-mortem, which might reveal that “Major Martin” had not died after an air crash at sea, but from rat poison.Purchase was reassuring: “Mincemeat [the body] took a minimal dose of a rat poison containing phosphorus. Military manoeuvres were conducted in Syria, with numbers inflated by dummy tanks and armoured vehicles to deceive observers. [11], Cholmondeley was a flight lieutenant in the Royal Air Force (RAF) who had been seconded to MI5, Britain's domestic counter-intelligence and security service. [18][19][n 4] At the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, Allied planners agreed on the selection of Sicily – codenamed Operation Husky – and decided to undertake the invasion no later than July. He asked admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, to personally intervene and persuade the Spanish to surrender the documents. Operation Mincemeat - The Man Who Never Was A grave in the main Huelva cemetery holds the body of a man who changed the course of the Second World War. In fact, there is good evidence that the local pathologist in Huelva knew this at once, but preferred to keep his suspicions to himself (see Jimmy Burns,'Papa Spy', 2009, p. 234. Dasher sank, and 379 men were killed. The majority of Britains achievements in WW2 have been 're-written history'. [6][7], In September 1942 an aircraft flying from Britain to Gibraltar crashed off Cádiz. [111], On 9 July the Allies invaded Sicily in Operation Husky. It is based on the book of the same name by Lt. Cmdr. For the benefit of Rays a Larf, andyht57, peekey, rjhj, Henry McDermott, and anyone else of a conspiratorial nature still perpetuating the Dasher myth, may I offer conclusive proof that the body was that of Glyndwr Michael, and not John Melville?Among the declassified documents relating to Operation Mincemeat is a “top secret” memo written by Ewen Montagu, reporting a conversation with Bentley Purchase, the coroner who supplied the body. However the fake 'legend' of 'Major Martin' included a stern letter from his bank manager over a huge overdraft etc. For the latest updates across BBC blogs, visit the Blogs homepage. Urnungal is right that codenames were supposed not to refer in any way to the objective, individual or operation - a rule that was broken by all sides, throughout the war. Complain about this comment (Comment number 17). HMS Dasher was an American-built merchant vessel con- verted to an auxiliary aircraft carrier for transatlantic convoys. The theory that the body was that of John Melville from HMS Dasher is, quite simply, wrong: there has never been any hard evidence to back up this notion, which seems to be based mostly on wishful thinking. Complain about this comment (Comment number 5). Complain about this comment (Comment number 16). [125] The British security services decided that the best response was to publish the story of Mincemeat. [16] As part of his duties, Montagu had been briefed on the need for deception operations to aid the Allied war aims in a forthcoming invasion operation in the Mediterranean. For example the 2007 Scotsman article citation seems to apply to the entire section. [67], There was also a letter of introduction for Martin from his putative commanding officer, Vice-Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, the chief of Combined Operations, to Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew Cunningham, the commander-in-chief Mediterranean Fleet and Allied naval commander in the Mediterranean. The case is argued by authors John and Noreen Steele in their book The Secrets of HMS "Dasher" . [107], Hitler informed Mussolini that Greece, Sardinia and Corsica must be defended "at all costs", and that German troops would be best placed to do the job. Complain about this comment (Comment number 18). He advised that if the body of a man who had died from suitable causes were washed ashore in Spain, no one could tell, without elaborate post mortem, that he had not died in an air crash. False communications about troop movements were generated from the Twelfth Army headquarters, while the Allied command post in Tunis – which was to be the headquarters of the Sicily invasion – reduced radio traffic by using land-lines wherever possible. [35] Purchase agreed to keep the body in the mortuary refrigerator at a temperature of 4 °C (39 °F) – any colder and the flesh would freeze, which would be obvious after the body defrosted. [5] In August 1942, before the Battle of Alam el Halfa, a corpse was placed in a blown-up scout car, in a minefield facing the German 90th Light Division. There has been speculation that one corpse from the sinking was used during the British deception operation Mincemeat ("The Man Who Never Was"). Operation Mincemeat The fate of the Dasher’s crew has long made headline news. Operation Mincemeat was a successful British deception operation of the Second World War to disguise the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily. There have been many many attempts to discredit the idea that Glyndwr Michael's body was used in Operation Mincemeat. Complain about this comment (Comment number 31). Named Operation Mincemeat, the plan was to have a body washed up on a shore, disguised as a British Army Officer, carrying faked documents showing a planned Allied invasion of Sardinia and Greece, in the hope that the Axis powers would take the bait and leave Sicily largely unguarded. Seven years later, historian Denis Smyth, author of Deathly Deception: The Real Story of Operation Mincemeat, cited a formerly top secret memo written by Montagu identifying the corpse as the Welshman Glyndwr Michael. On the contrary, in the words of a triumphant message sent to Churchill, "Mincemeat swallowed rod, line and sinker.". Huelva was also chosen because the British vice-consul in the city, Francis Haselden, was "a reliable and helpful man" who could be relied upon, according to Montagu. Along with the other items placed on him, an itinerary of his activity in London could be constructed from 18 to 24 April. [57][58] As the three cards and passes needed looked too new for a long-serving officer, they were issued as recent replacements for lost originals. Imagine the scandal if it was revealed that British agents had deliberately stolen a dead body. As a Royal Marine, Major Martin came under Admiralty authority, and it would be easy to ensure that all official inquiries and messages about his death would be routed to the Naval Intelligence Division. [3] Number 28 on the list was titled: "A Suggestion (not a very nice one)";[4] it was an idea to plant misleading papers on a corpse that would be found by the enemy. After all a body of a tramp who had died from ingesting Rat Poison repeatedly frozen and defrosted would of course fool a German Autopsy into thinking he had drowned. The nominally neutral Spanish government shared copies of the documents with the Abwehr, the German military intelligence organisation, before returning the originals to the British. Complain about this comment (Comment number 26), I have to agree with Andyht57, Royal Navy Fleet Headquarters, Portsmouth confirmed in 2006 that the "Man who never was", was in fact John Melville who was killed when HMS Dasher blew up off Arran on the 27th March 1943. Such, briefly and baldly, is the story of ‘Operation Mincemeat’ – as the scheme was named, with a nice sense of the macabre, by its principal begetters, planners and executors, a team led by Lieutenant-Commander Ewen Montagu RNVR. Those who are denigrating this as a rewriting of history should probably read the book first.The body was never seen by German authorities and was given only a cursory examination by a Spanish doctor. "Michael was found in a disused warehouse". Forensic examination showed they had been read and Ultra decrypts of German messages showed that the Germans fell for the ruse. I understand there is no difficulty in obtaining corpses at the Naval Hospital, but, of course, it would have to be a fresh one. Complain about this comment (Comment number 9), also, for those who still think it was a fit young sailor from HMS Dasher, again, do your research:The Dasher theory, has been denied by the Naval Historical Branch who responded to a Freedom of Information request (D/NHB/25/56 of 22 Jan 2010) as follows:"As far as both the Royal Navy and the Ministry of Defence are concerned, the body used in Operation Mincemeat was that of Glyndwr Michael as described in the files now in The National Archive at Kew. He was the inaugural winner of the Monaco GP in 1939 and was a works Bentley driver. [Chief of the Imperial General Staff] felt that our forces for the assault were insufficient. 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